Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka is a collection of short stories by Nikolai Gogol. In case you forgot, Gogol was a Ukrainian-born Russian writer who lived in the first half of the 19th century and is considered by many to be the father of modern Russian literature. His Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka are very popular in Russia and served as a basis for operas by Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Mussorgsky, and others. And, in the early 21st century, as a basis for an adventure game.

The game Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka (hereafter referred to as Dikanka) is a retelling of the Christmas Eve story but includes elements of several other short stories from the Dikanka collection. It is set in a timeless 'old Ukraine', a world that is both mystical, magical, and realistic. In some ways Gogol's stories resemble Greek myths whose protagonists are titans and gods and beings with all sorts of supernatural powers, yet their behavior is entirely human. In Dikanka you will encounter witches, undead (including a vampire), a rusalka, a leshi, a domovoi, and even one denizen of Hell makes a personal appearance. Yet all characters, including the magical ones, have human troubles and desires.

The hero of the story is purely human. His name is Vakula and he's the blacksmith in the village of Dikanka. He is an extremely solidly built fellow, very skilled smith and also painter of icons; he's very good-natured and helpful, perhaps not too bright but not stupid either, and very much in love with Dikanka's most beautiful girl, Oksana.

As everyone knows, women are trouble - and Oksana is no exception. At a whim, she gives Vakula an impossible task: she promises to marry him as soon as he brings her the same slippers (Cherevichki - also a name of Tchaikovsky's opera based on this story) that the empress is wearing. Or at least, a rational person might think such task impossible. Not so Vakula. He is undaunted by the fact that Dikanka is thousand miles far from Saint Petersburg where the empress lives, or that a simple village blacksmith doesn't stand much chance of getting an audience with her.

Full of optimism, Vakula sets out on his quest to get the slippers. It is the middle of winter (Christmas Eve in fact) and all roads are under several feet of snow. No problem - after running a few seemingly random errands for the villagers (I said Vakula was very helpful), Vakula finds out that the quickest way to get to Saint Petersburg is flying on the devil's back. A devil is never too far, so finding one is not an issue. The fact that the devil wants Vakula's soul in exchange is. An old fashioned idealist that he is, Vakula refuses to give up his immortal soul so easily. That is actually rather fortunate, as otherwise Dikanka would be an extremely short game.

If you want to know whether and how Vakula manages to get the slippers for his beloved and win Oksana's heart and hand in marriage, read the original story, watch the opera, or play the game. The latter might admittedly be a bit of a problem because as of this writing, the game only exists in Russian. When I had to take Russian lessons as a kid, I never thought they'd do me any good - and although I would lie if I said my Russian was any good, the ability to play Russian adventure games is an unexpected windfall. Luckily for me, Dikanka is a game that even children can play (Russian children at least), even though I wouldn't say it is aimed at children specifically.

From the visual and interface perspective, Dikanka is a classic adventure game: 2D point and click, cartoon graphics, third person. Naturally, since it was released in 2005, it's high res graphics, smoothly animated and anti-aliased, with full voice-overs and digitized music track. The visuals are very clean, simple, and appealing, with crisp outlines and saturated colors. My only gripe with the animation is that in a few instances the authors took shortcuts, making things happen 'in a snap' instead of adding extra frames of animation.

The game world is well designed; the village (where most of the action takes place) has a central location with pathways branching off in four directions. This hub-and-spokes design ensures that it never takes too long to get from one location to another. There are also no empty screens thrown in just for show - in each location there's at least one important object or NPC.

On the audio side, Dikanka is similarly clean and simple. The musical score, although not memorable, fits the game well and adds to the atmosphere. Since I barely understood the spoken Russian and much preferred reading the optional subtitles (in Cyrillic) while playing Dikanka, I'm not exactly well qualified to judge the voice acting quality. Nevertheless, I would venture a guess that the voice acting was quite good, except that with one or two minor characters it was a little too obvious that there were fewer voice actors than characters. But that is just a minor quibble.

The puzzles were 99% inventory based and I found them surprisingly easy. Even with my poor Russian, I was never left wondering what to do next. There were plenty of hints in the game and all puzzles were logical, at least as soon as I finally realized what the correct solution was. Hardcore puzzlers who prefer taking reams of notes and spending hours upon hours trying to figure out bizarre machinery would be disappointed with Dikanka. On the other hand, players who don't like being slowed down by puzzles too much should enjoy it. This leads to my biggest complaint about this game - it's too short. It took me only two evenings to finish the game, and that's when I only just understood the conversations.

I can safely say that I truly enjoyed Dikanka, more so than I expected. I had been only very lightly exposed to Gogol's works, but that didn't cause me any problems; the game's story is fully self-contained. Playing in a foreign language that I'm not very good at was an enjoyable challenge. Overall, Dikanka is a fresh and charming game, simple yet well designed and executed. It gets a B+ and the grade would be higher if the game was just a little longer.

Final Grade: B+
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